Mayor Johnson Reveals 19 Local Investors as First Step of "Playing to Win" Strategy

Sactown Royalty | Jan 22

In the past couple of days the city of Sacramento has been reeling at the news that the Maloofs had officially and publicly come to an agreement to sell the team to the Hansen-Ballmer group in Seattle. Today it was Sacramento's turn to hit back, and Mayor Johnson did that with a press conference today in which he unveiled the first part of his plan to keep the team in Sacramento. The Mayor was joined by the entire Sacramento city council as well as other elected officials from around the region.

At the conference, Johnson unveiled his four-point "Playing to Win" Strategy as follows:

1: Identify and assemble a local ownership group

2: Identify a large equity partner

3: Work out the arena deal with the newly identified ownership group

4: Show the NBA that Sacramento is a great and viable market

Today was all about point 1, as Johnson unveiled the local coalition who would team up with the large equity partner to submit a competitive offer to the NBA. He also repeated that Commissioner David Stern welcomes such a submission. The Mayor said that he had hoped to get 3-5 local members together to put in $1 million each, but after 3 days, ended up with 19.